Is your heart right?

“To put the world in order, we must first put the
nation in order; to put the nation in order,
we must put the family in order; to put the
family in order, we must cultivate our personal life;
and to cultivate our personal life,
we must first set our hearts right.

~ Confucius

Need to protect yourself better?

This quote arrested my attention and got me to wondering about abusive states of mortal mind I need to be more diligent in defending myself from...

"If you are constantly being mistreated, you're cooperating with the treatment."

 ~ Robert Anthony

Medicalizing human behavior

Claude Lewis got it right in a column he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He began, “It may be hard to recall, but once there was a time when people took responsibility for their behavior, without recourse to the psychiatric and psychological communities.” He continued, “Today, all sorts of bad behavior is being reclassified—as one disease or another. The latest is something doctors are referring to as ‘intermittent explosive disorder’ (IED).”

Road rage! Medical researchers are trying to pin the blame on genetic disorders rather than holding perpetrators responsible for their thoughts and actions. It’s a disturbing trend.

We are thinking beings. We can decide to love one another. If a driver pulls out and cuts us short on the highway, we don’t have to get mad at them. We can forgive and proceed.

Pharmaceutical companies looking for another market to sell their drugs to would argue otherwise. They want us to believe that we don’t have control over the emotions, that we are mindless reactors to external material stimuli, and that we need a drug to control our actions.

The reasoning is wrong and misleading.

We are more than inert chemicals, senseless electrical impulses and mechanical movement. We are spiritual beings who reflect an intelligent and wise divine Mind.

Great spiritual thinkers and prophets gave us inspired directives to follow like “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” because they knew we could obey these commands and make a better world.

Each of us needs to take responsibility for our thoughts and actions. Obedience to moral and spiritual code above indulgence of selfish want is a good place to start. Errant human behavior should not be medicalized, but spiritualized.

The closer we grow to God and the more faithful we live to divine Love, the better our behavior will be and the less road rage we’ll feel, if that is ever a temptation.

Taking responsibility

I recently read a cartoon that was divided into a then and now picture. Under “Then” a mother is doctoring her son’s bruised elbows and knees and commenting to him “I guess we’ve learned to be more careful when climbing trees!” In the “Now” picture the mother is doctoring her son’s bruised elbows and knees and complains “We need to pass legislation requiring safer trees!”

It’s been a common and unfortunate trend of recent years. Rather than taking responsibility for our thoughts and actions we blame something else for our sufferings. Fast-food restaurants are often blamed for obesity as if consumers were forced to eat their fare. People commit crimes and reply “I couldn’t help it” citing abuse in their past.

Compassion and understanding are needed to help society deal with its ills. Goodness knows we all need help in improving our models and learning better behavior. But absolving responsibility for thoughts and actions is not a good place to start.

It’s healthy to take responsibility for our mental household. It puts us in a position of dominion and authority to know our mental precincts. We can take command of evil impulses and prevent them from affecting us before there is an outward consequence.

God made us intelligent beings. A consciousness of our God-given ability to think clearly and act wisely gives us the discernment we need to avoid evil in the first place or to quickly work out of trouble when it seems to take over.

We’re not helpless. God is an ever-present help. We don’t have to live out the role of a victim. We can take responsibility for our thoughts today and side with the good thoughts, the spiritual thoughts, and lead a predictably progressive life.